The violent riots in the United Kingdom in early August 2024 and the decision of the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) to leave X (Twitter) announced on the 16th August 2024 may seem like totally disconnected events. Yet both reflect a widespread concern that social media actively promotes division and networks based on hate-fueled violence. As NEAS stated upon leaving X: “We believe the failure to control content on not consistent with our values” (Mark Cotton, NEAS Deputy Director of Communications and Engagement). What NEAS and the riots have brought to the forefront are the online realities experienced by large swathes of the public and the need to fundamentally rethink social media governance.
The UK government has suggested it may review the Online Safety Act in light of the riots – this is vital. Disinformation, hate speech, and the coordination of violent unrest on social media contributed to the spread of riots. However, the suggestion to expand the scope of the law – so that social media companies are legally responsible for failures to control the algorithms within their platforms that allow misinformation to flourish – will not do much -thing to solve the fundamental problems.
The UK government must instead review the foundations of social media governance, starting from the updated premise that freedom of expression online must be earned and is not an automatic right. Otherwise, reforms focused on combating disinformation will simply continue to maintain the current security-centric approach to social media. Historically, the main aim of government in the UK and elsewhere has been to root out potential terrorists and protect children (in particular) from illegal, malicious and harmful content online (see also Yar, 2018). Current proposals continue this security-centric approach by placing social media companies as co-conspirators alongside harmful individuals or groups to create a climate/pathway through which online violence turns into violence around the world real through the dissemination of disinformation. The governance of online interactions should instead be guided by the promotion of citizenship for all.
For too long, the defense of free speech has been seen as the untouchable guiding principle, with the internet and social media defended as “public goods”. Initially, this resulted in widespread optimism that social media was integral to holding undemocratic regimes accountable and could generate positive and productive social change, with the culmination of this optimism perhaps being the Arab Spring of the early 1990s. 2010 (Comunello and Anzera, 2012). ). Yet social media and the internet have never been public spaces and never allowed for free speech as idealists claim. Social media companies are large corporations, run by “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2019), with underlying logics that generate profits through interaction with content – and content that is hateful, antagonistic and source of division generate greater interactions than the reverse (Munn, 2019; Ribeiro et al, 2020 for a discussion).
The riots and the NEAS response are therefore a reflection of the growth of what I here we are talking about “toxic citizenship”, which manifested itself in extreme forms during the riots and violence that erupted on the streets of the United Kingdom in August 2024. Social media has become a space in which Widespread hatred, misogyny and what I elsewhere call “everyday extremism” are prices. who must be paid by the majority for the “benefits” that social media provides. Members of the public frequently report trolling (being subjected to hostile interactions from those seeking to provoke a response), doxing (unwarranted exposure of personal data online) and, more broadly, being subjected to abuse in line, for example in relation to their race. , gender or political opinions (Hannan, 2018; Burke, 2015). The riots are therefore an extreme manifestation of the experiences of millions of people. on a daily basis.
In addition to the consequences for mental health, the consequences for active citizenship are profound. The fear of being attacked by others results in the majority either not speaking out on issues at all, or confining their comments to forums populated by like-minded individuals within “chambers of discussion”. echo” (Quattrociocchi et al, 2016). Much of the public expects that if they speak out on particular issues they will be met with extreme hostility. These effects are felt more acutely by women, ethnic minorities, environmental activists, transactivists and other marginalized groups (Döring and Mohseni, 2020 for such experiences for journalists).
The starting point for a review of social media governance should therefore be the assumption that all social media platforms are ones that NEAS would like to be a part of. In short, the self-exclusion and silencing on social media platforms of a large portion of the population who are afraid to speak out on issues due to the fear of being shouted down or worse by a very vocal minority has profound implications for citizenship. (Griffon, 2023).
One possible way forward would be to start with thinking inspired by a parallel public sphere – that is, the current approach to regulating UK football stadiums. This may seem unlikely, but we need to start with radical thinking, not least because it will avoid the inevitable dependencies that will emerge from changes locked into security- and industry-centric logic. But the thinking inspired by British football regulations is also very instructive for other reasons. Historically, football was also highly toxic, with racism openly practiced in stadiums – such behavior was widely considered to be an integral part of the culture of the game (Jewell et al, 2014). However, nowadays, although not yet perfect, the regulation of British football is extensive: for example, the courts can issue football banning orders, which prevent offenders from entering stadiums; while hateful, racist and homophobic chants are illegal and subject to criminal prosecution (Pearson, 2021). The result was a shift in football culture centered on increasing self-policing of unacceptable behavior (Pearson, 2012: 162-7).
The lessons are clear. A similar shift in social media culture will take a long time, but to have meaningful implications, lawmakers must go beyond promoting incremental change and ask deeper questions: Fundamentally, what kind of society are we? what happens to us when an ambulance service is kicked off social media? media?
References
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Döring, N. & Mohseni, MR 2020. “Sexist hate speech in YouTube and YouNow comments: Results of two content analyses.” SCM studies in communication and media9(1): 62-88. https://doi.org/10.5771/2192-4007-2020-1-62
Griffin, R. 2023. “Public and Private Power in Social Media Governance: Multipartyism, Rule of Law, and Democratic Accountability.” Transnational legal theory14(1): 46-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2023.2203538
Hannan, J. (2018). “Trolling us to death? Social media and post-truth politics.” European Journal of Communication33(2): 214-226. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118760323
Jewell, R.T., Simmons, R., and Szymanski, S. 2014. “Bad for business? The effects of hooliganism on English professional football clubs. Journal of Sports Economics, 15(5): 429-450. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002514535169
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Pearson, G. 2012. An ethnography of football fans: cans, cops and carnivals (Manchester University Press, Manchester)
Pearson, G. 2021. “A beautiful law for the beautiful game? Revisiting the Football Offenses Act 1991”. The Journal of Criminal Law85(5): 362-374. https://doi.org/10.1177/00220183211007269
Quattrociocchi, W., Scala, A. and Sunstein, CR 2016. “Echo Chambers on Facebook” SSRN documents. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2795110
Ribeiro, MH, Ottoni, R., West, R., Almeida, VAF and Meira Jr., W. .2020. “Audit of radicalization pathways on YouTube”. FAT* ’20: Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Equity, Accountability and Transparencyp. 131-141. https://doi.org/10.1145/3351095.3372879
Winkelman, SB, Oomen-Early, J., Walker, AD, Chu, L., and Yick-Flanagan, A. 2015. “Exploring cyberharassment among women who use social media.” Universal Journal of Public Health3(5): 194-201. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujph.2015.030504
Yar, M. 2018. “Regulatory failure? The demands and dilemmas of combating illegal content and behavior on social networks. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime1(1): 5-20. https://www.doi.org/10.52306/01010318RVZE9940
Zuboff, S. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile books.
Further reading on international electronic relations